Applied Psychoacoustics Lab (APL)

We are a multidisciplinary team of psychoacoustics researchers, digital audio signal processing engineers, sound engineers and music producers, based in the School of Computing and Engineering of the University of Huddersfield, UK. The lab was established by Dr Hyunkook Lee, a leading expert in spatial audio and psychoacoustic engineering, in 2013, with a vision to enhance the quality of audio experience in people's life by bridging the gap between fundamental psychoacoustics and audio engineering. We conduct world-leading research in various areas of psychoacoustic engineering, including 3D audio perception, recording and reproduction, binaural audio rendering with virtual acoustic simulation, perceptual modelling of spatial and timbral auditory attributes and spatial audio sonification. The academic and industrial impacts of our research were considered “world-leading” in the Research Excellence Framework 2021, the UK’s system for assessing the excellence of research in UK Universities. We offer a 3D audio solution named ASPEN™ (APL Spatial Audio Engine), which is a framework for immersive 3D audio content creation and reproduction. It provides the user with the most realistic and natural sense of auditory presence in binaural and multichannel listening environments. Its advanced virtual acoustic simulation technology enables high-quality immersive audio experience for music, film, games, extended reality (XR)/metaverse, automotive audio and many other applications. We are also passionate about bringing good things we found and developed from our research into the real world as accessible software products using our extensive experiences in sound engineering and signal processing. Check out our first commercial audio plugin/app VIRTUOSO powered by ASPEN™, the most natural and realistic-sounding binaural translation tool for stereo and multichannel audio.